The Official Blog of The Star Sydney Business and Events

NEWS: NRL’s night of nights

On 29 September, the NRL community celebrated players at the annual Dally M awards at The Star Event Centre. Suites in The Darling Hotel were transformed into Dally M Styling Suites for wives and girlfriends to prepare, before arriving in front of a huge media pack lining the red carpet entrance on Pirrama Rd.

Preparation for the NRL’s night of nights began four months out from the event, with the NRL setting the objective to make it a glamorous night to remember; a night that would honour the chosen winners and one for every guest to enjoy. This was the second consecutive year the Awards were held at The Star Event Centre.

As well as honouring Jarryd Hayne and Johnathan Thurston who were joint winners of the Dally M Medal, awards were also given to the premier player in each position, the best coach, and the best captain, representative player of the year and the most outstanding rookie of the season.

The NRL used multiple areas across The Star including transforming suites in The Darling hotel into Dally M Styling Suites where the NRL stars’ wives and girlfriends (WAGs) prepared for the big night. The suites allowed the glam squad space, only metres away from the event, to spend approximately 2 hours preparing each person for the red carpet.

Down on the red carpet that lined the entrance to the Event Centre the waiting media pack included the Daily Telegraph, Sydney Confidential, Popsugar Australia, News.com.au and Fox Sports, as well as many other outlets. The Project did a live cross to the fashions on the red carpet with Julian Schiller. A Vine 360 booth on the red carpet captured 360 degrees of attendee’s outfits, with the videos being live streamed on Twitter.

Behind the scenes contingency plans had been prepared to deal effectively with wet weather over the red carpet arrival area, in which case arrivals would have been moved to Astral Tower’s porte-cochere entry. The wet weather held off for all guests to arrive.

The 750 guests dined on canapés in the Event Centre Foyer including Queensland spanner crab, Angus beef carpaccio and Crystal Bay prawns, before being seated to enjoy the main course of beef tenderloin with crispy Queensland king prawns.

The event was broadcast live by Fox Sports with highlight performances by Jessica Mauboy and Jazz Nouveau.

In a community touch driven by Rabbitohs’ star Greg Inglis, eight children from the Sydney Children’s Hospital in Randwick, including three-year-old cancer patient and huge Rabbitohs’ fan Jake Price, met their NRL heroes and enjoyed the awards presentation from a VIP suite in the Event Centre with their parents.

Selected NRL fans enjoyed canapés and drinks in Marquee prior to the event and then joined celebrations in the Event Centre.